In European Patent Application No. 86900936.1 (see corresponding PCT International Publication No. W088/08856, Nov. 17, 1988) and our co-pending patent application Ser. No. 257,895, it is disclosed that comonomers for propylene may be made by protecting the oxygen of a copolymerizable hydroxy-containing compound by substituting the hydrogen thereof with a silyl group having a minimum steric bulk, i.e., at least about three carbon atoms surrounding it.
The compound 2-allyl phenol is known.
Silylated monomers of the general formula ##STR3## where --X--may be a divalent connecting group, are suggested in our above-mentioned co-pending application as comonomers for propylene for the introduction of functional sites to copolymers made by Ziegler-Natta catalysis.
The peculiar advantage of 2-allyl phenol as a potential comonomer in its silylated form apparently has not been seen in the prior art; it is believed this comonomer is novel as a composition of matter.